A blog about running a small vineyard and holiday lets in the Costa Prata region Estremadura, Portugal

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onsdag 13 januari 2016

Getting there-little by little.

2016
In a distance I see the tractor. It is one of those tractors that the Portuguese farmers use around here, the Portuguese farmers that grow fruit that is. Around here it is mainly apples and pears. There is another kind of tractor around these areas, a much slimmer variety which is used between the rows of grapes.

The tractor is getting closer. It is hard to see it now because of the sun in my face and in my eyes. I am walking my dogs on this gravel road along the Rio Tornada, Tornada river, which isn´t a river but more of a stream, at least here.

Around me there are fields with apples and pears and some super food as they call it in Sweden, the ever present Portuguese kale. The thing is the Portuguese don´t even know it is fashionable to eat it. A trendy thing people pay a lot for in Sweden or USA or England. Here they don´t care. They eat it because they like it, it´s cheap and they can grow it year round.

Not trendy

The sound of the tractor is getting stronger and it is almost impossible to hear all the birds. The flowers are visible still. Poppy and a pretty little yellow type of clover which are growing in abundance.Soon enough they will be smothered in all fumes and smoke from diesel from that tractor.

yellow clover

View from a farm.

Now the tractor is clear to see and it isn´t new or clean. There is a little man driving it. Now when he is getting closer I recognise him. He has some fields near us and he has always looked very grumpy. Every time we have passed I have always tried to smile my widest grin and shouted Bom Dia! He has never once looked at me nor said anything.

This time I can see that he had spotted me, this strange foreign lady, clearly crazy. Why would a sane woman walk big dogs in the middle of the day and not growing...kale for instance if she wasn´t complete nuts?